Share Your Verse

Share Your Verse is an interactive community storytelling project that invites all of Hamilton to write our city in magic, fantasy, science fiction, and more. Young Hamiltonian writers, Lennex Maley, Nora McIntyre, Alaa Ezzidani, Settia Cavan, and Tasneem Jahan, through their short stories transform the streets, the parks, the ponds, the shops, the factories, and their homes through speculative fiction and challenge you to do the same. You can share your original short story by scanning the QR code on any of the five banners around Hamilton International Village and Downtown Hamilton..

“Our goal for this project is to show how different people can have drastically different experiences and relationships with this City we call home. We also want to platform the new and exciting literary voices coming out of Hamilton and celebrate the young people working hard at their craft” says Chukky Ibe, the Executive Director of Hamilton Verse.

In search of inspiration? Don’t worry, each banner has a writing prompt inspired by the short stories written about our city. In these stories; Hamilton Harbour becomes the homewater of a sea monster, a trickster god wanders along the trails surrounding the Devil’s Punchbowl, and ghosts inhabit the row of abandoned houses on Strachan Street. A prodigious young inventor explores the industrial areas of a futuristic Hamilton in search of a kidnapped girl, and a ghostly feline walks the halls of Jackson Square.

“Share your verse provides a creative space to imagine the world otherwise, and to dwell in the wondrous, the fantastical, and the impossible.” Aseja Dava, Editor of Shadows of the Mountain Anthology.
Share Your Verse by scanning the QR code in the posters and visiting the hamiltonverse.ca. The stories will be compiled and shared through the Hamilton Verse website and social media pages, and at Write Like conference in February 2026. Share Your Verse challenge is supported by the city of Hamilton Placemaking Grant.

Each story includes: